1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a document information input apparatus, a document information input method, a document information input program and a recording medium that can recognize information in a real document and input the information to another document displayed by a computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, when a user wants to paste a sequence of characters written in a real document to another document on the display of a computer, the user needs to read the real document with a scanner and the like so as to generate image information of the real document. Then, the user causes the computer to recognize the image information as text information. The user copies the character sequence in question in the recognized text information and then pastes the character sequence to the document on the screen of the computer.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 11-203403 discloses an information processor. The information processor photographs a document image with a CCD (Charge Coupled Diode) camera at low resolution. Then, when a finger or a pen is photographed together with the document, the information processor takes the difference between the original document image and the document image including the finger or the pen in order to determine a designated local area to be recognized. After that, the information processor newly photographs the designated local area at high resolution and then recognizes image information of the designated local area as text information.
However, the above methods have some problems. The former conventional method has a problem regarding efficiency. In the former conventional method, it takes a long time to perform all the processes from the process for designating and recognizing a portion to be pasted of a real document to the process for pasting the recognized text information to another document on the display, and furthermore, the processes thereof are complicated.
On the other hand, the latter conventional method also has some problems. In the latter conventional method, it is necessary to process a photographed document image in order to determine whether or not a finger or a pen is included in the photographed document image. As a result, the process causes an increased work load. Additionally, it is necessary to detect the position of the finger tip or the pen tip from the document image photographed at low resolution in order to determine the designated local area to be processed. As a result, it is difficult to extract the local area to be recognized with high accuracy because of the small amount of information photographed at low resolution. In order to compensate for this problem, it is necessary to photograph the document image at high resolution as mentioned above. As a result, increased processing time is required.